Love Worn Lightly
by lostladyknight
Summary: Catherine visits Warrick's grave and reflects on life and the past. She recalls choices she has made and catches him up on the things he's missed. YoBling. Written for the 8th FCG challenge.


A/N: It's that time again! I've got another story for you all compliments of the FCG 8-Week challenge. Please remember if you have any questions about the FCG it would be my pleasure to answer!

This story is YoBling. It's set around now. The flashback is set sometime in Season 5. Please enjoy and review!

-LLK

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Love Worn Lightly

--

The cemetery was dark as she pulled her car to a slow stop and stepped out. She clicked the automatic locks and gazed up at the stars in the sky briefly as she climbed the small hill to his final resting place. As she crested the top, she realized that something had changed - someone had been there. The slowly growing pile of old flowers, notes, photographs, and other miscellaneous items that she hadn't had the heart to dispose of since he'd been there, was gone. In its place lay a small bundle of wild flowers and a high-heeled foot print.

She dusted the ground briefly beside his grave and settled onto it, running two fingers gently over his head marker. She picked up the flowers absently and looked at them, although perhaps with a bit more scrutiny than she should have. She looked at the tiny petals of pink, orange, and yellow, brushing them gently with the tips of her forefinger and thumb to clean off the tiny bits of dirt that had settled there.

"Was Tina here then?" she asked him, lowering the flowers back to their original position. "Did she bring the baby by to see you? I bet he's getting big now. He'll be a year soon, won't he?"

She waited a few moments for a response, though she knew she wouldn't receive one. "I see she picked up, it looks nice. It was about time we got this place cleaned up."

Seeing his grave blanketed in the many things that had gathered there had somehow brought her comfort during the many times she'd visited it. Things such as the flowers she'd brought him, seven bouquets out of the thirteen that had stacked up there. The photographs: she'd been bringing him a new one once a week and tucking it gently beneath another layer of dried blossoms. The fetal pig Grissom had swiped from her office on his way out of the lab on his last day and left for Warrick's comfort. The two tickets to the super bowl that Nick had planned to give him for his birthday. And the red ink stained draft of Greg's first chapter that he'd said none of the team was allowed to read until Warrick had his chance.

"The flowers are nice, too," she whispered mildly. "Really good selection of colors. And they'll stay that way a while because the weather's warming up. I could plant some like them if you want, that way you'll have some fresh ones to enjoy all spring."

She plucked a few dried leaves off from on his small mound of grass and tossed them to the side. "Just a small patch here, they'll grow nicely."

She didn't add that this way Tina couldn't clean away their memories. Nor did she add that she was a little angry at the other woman for presumably tossing them all into the trash. She wasn't the only woman who felt loss in Warrick's absence, didn't she realize that?

"I'll bring a box once a month," she promised him. "And gather your things in it so they stay safe. We'll keep certain items for Eli. It would have been nice for him to have Miss Piggy one day."

She laughed at the thought, thinking about how perplexed the boy would be at sixteen when she Nick and Greg showed up at his birthday party to give him a two decade old fetal pig in a jar. "I've always had a love-hate relationship with that thing. What'd she do with it? She didn't throw her away, did she?"

"Nick asked me to tell you he's sorry he hasn't been by in the last couple weeks," she said, running a few fingers over his headstone again. "He said to let you know he'll be here on Thursday, as long as he doesn't have to come in and cover a case. That's his on-call night."

She and Nick had been the most religious visitors to his grave-side. Nick had been there every week until lately. She stopped every evening on her way home from work, sometimes on her way there. She would sit beside his grave, as she was now, and catch him up on things he was missing out on or make small talk for a while.

"Riley asked me earlier if I thought you'd mind if she came by to visit you." She stopped and was thoughtful for a moment. "She's a pretty good kid, she's got quite a mean streak in her too, though. A bit of her reminds me of Sara. You'd like her--I think she's a good fit with us."

"Ray's a good guy too," she admitted. "He's really doing a great job. It's taken him a while to get his sea legs, if you know what I mean. But he'll be a damn good CSI one day."

She thought about how much everything had changed just in the last few months. How the team had lost Sara and Grissom. How she'd lost Warrick. How she'd slowly started to pick up the pieces and laugh and smile again.

"Greg's doing great as a CSI three," she caught herself smiling. "You remember when we weren't sure if he'd ever make it in the field? We should've had more faith in the kid."

They were both quiet for a while, something that hadn't really changed about her relationship with Warrick even after his death. He was the only person she'd ever known with whom she could sit in total silence and feel completely comfortable. Awkward silences had never existed between them.

--

_"What are you thinking about?" He broke the silence as they wandered up the strip._

_She lifted her head from his shoulder but didn't unwrap her arms from around his as they slowly continued to walk."We've had the perfect night."_

"_We always do," he agreed. She wouldn't have had to be looking at his face to know he was smiling._

_She ran her fingers through his, pulling closer to his arm and lowering her head back on his shoulder. "We're given paradise but only for a day," she quoted the musical they'd just seen._

"_It doesn't just have to be for a day." He stopped and pulled out of her grasp. He turned her face so that her eyes met his and lowered his lips onto hers. "We can do this."_

"_No," she whispered, stepping away from him. "Look, we can't take this thing any further than we already have. We can't."_

"_I just don't know why you always say that!" Warrick demanded, pulling away from her. "We can! You know we can."_

"_We can't," she pressed again, pulling completely away from him. "We've discussed this Warrick, we can't."_

"_Yeah, we have!" he said, a bit more loudly than he'd intended. "We have this conversation every time we go out together! You'd think you'd realize that, in itself, says something!"_

"_We can't."_

"_We can."_

"_We can't."_

--

"Do you remember the night we saw Aida?" she asked him. "That girl in the chorus had given us free tickets as a thank you for getting her stuff back after her break-in. Remember how we walked around the city that night until the sun came up? It's always been one of my favorite memories."

She peered down at the high heel footprint on his grave, the right shoe, probably left there when Tina had placed the flowers. She rubbed a hand over it gently, fluffing it out of the grass and chewed her lip quietly. It had been the last time she'd had that conversation with him before he'd met and married Tina.

"You were right," she admitted. "And I was wrong, as hard as that is for me to admit. I was just so scared. I was afraid because we worked together, but I guess that was kinda foolish of me. I mean, hell, if it worked for Griss and Sara..."

Her gaze turned away from his headstone for a moment as she looked around her for another focal point. The cemetery was so dark she couldn't see very far beyond where she sat so she glanced back down at him. She studied the flowers and tried to force her eyes to stop pooling. "We should've made it work. I should have let us make it work."

She shook her head sadly and picked up a small pink flower, tugging it away from the bundle. She dropped a kiss on the bud and placed it over his name on the grave marker. "You're all I'll ever want but this I am denied."

.:End:.

-Penned by Lostladyknight in the week of March 29, 2009.

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**The Challenge:** 1. Must use either the phrase "I just don't know." or "Shake it like a polaroid picture." 2. Must be between 990 and 9,990 words. 3. Must be between K and MA. 4. Must involve a fight. 5. A secret is optional. My story also had to use the lyrics: ""We're given paradise but only for a day." and "You're all I'll ever want but this I am denied."


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